Daniel Nashed's Blog

HCL aquires IBM Collaboration products

You probably all have heard about the deal. But there isn't much detailed information available yet.
HCL had already a development relationship for most of this products. IBM Connections was the big surprise.

It's a logical next step. For Notes/Domino/Sametime/Traveler and related products (which is the focus of what I am working on) the development team and support including L2 was already working for HCL.
So all the existing developers working on the product and new developers are hired!  Not only in new locations but also in Chelmsford, MA which is not far away from Westford, MA where the Iris/Lotus development team was located in the early days.

Now that HCL has a good overview working on Domino 10 as a product they have the confidence in the product to bring it forward.
The responsible manager for the Products and Platforms division -- the group responsible for all of the collaboration products -- worked for IBM before and has a clear vision why they want those products in their portfolio. And he wants the full control of product strategy for good reasons.

There is not much public information yet. IBM partners got an e-mail with details about a transition for IBM partners with details which will be more clear in January.
I asked back about public information that I can share for customers and partners and got a link to a more detailed statement, which I would like to share.

In this post you find a couple of -- from my point of view -- remarkable statements which all lead to the right direction. Some of those words have never been used by IBM when it comes to their Collaboration products.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exciting-news-collaboration-space-collaboration-workflow-platforms/

And there is another link for a short profile for the "pnp-hcl" division
https://www.linkedin.com/company/hcl-technologies-products-platforms-division/

The deal will be executed mid of 2019! So until mid of the year everything remains as it is for customers.
In the background there might be already changes and they will take some time to prepare. And some of the details can probably not be released in public yet.

But speaking with customers, partners and also some of the developers, I am confident that this is a very positive move!

-- Daniel

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